Last Thursday, the Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor, invoked the Urgent Notification (UN) Protocol which enables him to bring significant problems in a jail publicly to the attention of the justice secretary, who is required to respond within 28 days. HMP Chelmsford has joined just five other prisons who… Work with offenders looks at the detail of the latest “urgent notification” issued by the Chief Inspector of Prisons...
The Howard League for Penal Reform has been running a large-scale programme designed to reduce the number of children arrested since 2010. There is a consensus amongst experts that involving children in the criminal justice system should be avoided whenever possible. On the whole, troubled young children need support rather… Work with offenders updates a successful campaign by the Howard League for Penal Reform...
The latest edition of the Ministry of Justice and Office for National Statistics Criminal Justice Statistics quarterly gives a full picture of the impact of the pandemic on our court system. The figures cover the 12 month period ending on 31 March this year and so cover the main periods… Work with offenders looks at the latest published criminal justice statistics...
Further evidence emerged today of the damage done to the probation service by the government’s ill-advised Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) project. A new “thematic” inspection conducted jointly by HM Inspectorate of Probation and Care Quality Commission examined the community-based drug treatment and recovery work with people on probation and described it… Work with offenders looks at a critical new report from probation inspectors...
Last week, the twelve regions in the Probation Service (11 in England and one covering Wales) published their individual Regional Reoffending Plans. Following the reunification of the probation service and the new probation structures that took effect from the end of June 2021, the 12 Regional Probation Directors formally began… Work with offenders looks at the new regional probation strategy documents...
The Sentencing Council for England and Wales was set up in April 2010 to “promote greater transparency and consistency in sentencing, while maintaining the independence of the judiciary”. The main business of the Council is to issue guidelines on sentencing, which the courts must follow unless “it is in the… Work with Offenders looks at three new reports assessing the impact of the Sentencing Council...
In September 2019, the Ministry of Justice decided to pilot flexible operating hours in courts as part of their modernisation programme, or, in official language to look at: “maximising the use of time in specific court and tribunal hearing rooms to support a more flexible, efficient and effective justice system”.… Work with offenders looks at the evaluation of the pilot schemes...
The Ministry of Justice today published its official statistics bulletin on prison education for the year ending in March 2020, which means that the figures are almost entirely unaffected by the coronavirus-related lockdowns. It goes without saying that prison education is an important part of any prison’s regime. Improving prisoner… Work with offenders looks at today’s prison education statistics...
Yesterday (29 July 2021) the Ministry of Justice and Office of National Statistics published the latest edition of its quarterly Safety in Custody Statistics for people in prison in England and Wales. The current edition covers deaths in prison custody to June 2021 and assaults and self-harm to March 2021.… Work with offenders analyses the latest Safety in Custody statistics...
In what media commentators are calling “Crime Week”, the Ministry of Justice today announced further details from its Beating Crime Plan focused on new initiatives to tackle the underlying causes of crime. Much of the rhetoric has featured the traditional Conservative party “tough on crime” language. In his foreword to… Work with offenders looks at new initiatives to tackle the underlying causes of crime...